Clintons, Clintonomics, centrism

[PregnantChad]

Hi.  This is my first post after I began reading this board obsessively in July.

I was thinking back to 1992 and how Bill Clinton found "the third way"/triangulation as a way to the presidency.  I'm thinking he had to do that, as a move to the center could've been the only way for him to win after the Democrats were on such a losing streak nationally since '68.

It's obviously that most of us, on both sides, are tired of the Clintons.  But is "Clintonomics" no longer politically viable?  What about centrism in general?

[Virginiá]

If you're thinking centrism is the problem, it isn't. Clinton lost by running on Obama's legacy rather than bringing anything new to the table.

You can argue that that is part of it, but Clinton lost in large part because of numerous character deficits and never-ending scandals. She was also widely disliked among Millennials, a group critical to Democratic candidates, leading to significant erosion of her vote share among them in key states with close votes.

[PregnantChad]

I don't know how much of Obama's legacy was the problem.  Obama's approval #s are pretty good and I think in the grand scheme of things, Obama has been center-left.  E.g., Obamacare is really Gingrichcare from the 90s, but many have short memories, and it wouldn't matter to them anyway when premiums are approaching the size of a mortgage payment.  But, maybe Obama's approval #s are really based on Obama the person - which is definitely not transferable to Hillary.  Obama comes off as likeable and relatively scandal-free.  Hillary, uh, not so much.  And yes, she had no new ideas and literally no ideas that weren't with fine print and focus group-approved.  "Vote for me b/c the other guy is so vile" worked for me, but if I were a working class man in the Rust Belt who hasn't seen a decent wage in three decades, I might be left uninspired.

So I still wonder if the 3rd-way centrism that won in 1992 has just run its course, or are people just tired of the Clintons as people?  Or maybe middle America is looking for a different kind of centrism -- i.e., more "America first" and less corporatist?

With Trump being such a wild card, and 2020 seeming so far away, maybe it's not even knowable yet whether there will be a realignment or a shift in strategy.

[‼realJohnEwards‼]

If you're thinking centrism is the problem, it isn't. Clinton lost by running on Obama's legacy rather than bringing anything new to the table.

You can argue that that is part of it, but Clinton lost in large part because of numerous character deficits and never-ending scandals. She was also widely disliked among Millennials, a group critical to Democratic candidates, leading to significant erosion of her vote share among them in key states with close votes.

This is why I think that Sanders was a decisive factor (one of many)- he fired up my generation against Clinton, which ended up biting him (and the 53% of the country which did NOT vote for Trump) in the back.

[Virginiá]

This is why I think that Sanders was a decisive factor (one of many)- he fired up my generation against Clinton, which ended up biting him (and the 53% of the country which did NOT vote for Trump) in the back.

I just hope that the party gets the message: You can't put up someone bland who doesn't appeal to/energize Millennials. That is who the party relies on now. We are essentially the party of the young and the GOP is the party of the old. Of course, I feel it must be stated that the person we put up must also be able to perform decently among the old, which excludes at least one candidate I can think of.

But to put up a candidate as reviled as Clinton among Millennials reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of who the Democratic Party now represents, and this is why I agree that significant changes need to be made at the DNC and in state parties. They need to understand that they aren't representing the electorate of the 1990s/2000s anymore.

[ApatheticAustrian]

i PRAY that the rebuke of the center candidate this time doesn't makes BOTH parties unhinged...

that's the problem with the US majority system....if the dems screw up, people MUST go to the other party, even if that one is in an unhealthy state.

[DS0816]

Everything Clintons—and everyone in that camp (and I am including Hillary’s presidential primaries voters)—represents one thing, should this continue, with the Democratic Party: death.

[Fuzzy Bear Loves Christian Missionaries]

Trump is the centrist candidate in fact.  Not in temperament, perhaps, but in policy.  Trump brought the GOP to the center in economic policy, and, arguably, is more moderate in social policy as well. 

Even in foreign policy, Trump is less conservative than what the GOP has been dishing out.  His rhetoric belies a more moderate, less interventionist foreign policy.  It is only on immigration issues that he is markedly more conservative.

Trump is a positional moderate without a moderate persona.

[ApatheticAustrian]

Even in foreign policy, Trump is less conservative than what the GOP has been dishing out. 

i understand your argument (it's a strong one).....just 2 points.

1) trump at times doesn't seem to either understand or share the values and pillars of the small-l liberal small-d democratic system of the US and its "sacred" separation of branches and freedom of courts and media.

2) trump doesn't seem to share the vision of the US as a small-l liberal superpower or a positive force in the world.

ofc you could make the argument that any other geopolitical stance than isolationism is somehow more "extreme"....especially regarding its low popularity most of the times.

it's absolutely possible, while trump is one of the most disgusting personas i know and also surrounded himself with, imho, disgustins personas...he could govern as a centric democrat, less hell-bent to ryan-like kill government from within or make the country more religious.

if i don't trust him otherwise right now to defend the US system, domestic and global, it's his own fault for being so erratic and so easy to enrage at times, imho.

[Fuzzy Bear Loves Christian Missionaries]

I can tell you this, unequivocally:  If Hillary Clinton had dropped the Gender Feminism and overt pandering to minority groups and focused like a laser on the economic issues concerning the voters in WI, PA, and MI that did her in, she'd have won the election, despite everything.

She couldn't shut up, however.  She couldn't let folks know just how happy she'd be to shut down coal mines.  Good job, Hillary!  Coal mines aren't just in WV; they're in PA and OH as well, and the UMW used to be a liberal Democratic union.  Coal miners still need the kind of OSHA protections that the GOP has often been soft on, but first they need a mining job to go to.  Same thing with fracking workers and other energy industry workers that once were Democratic voters.  They didn't particularly appreciate being sacrificed on the new Religion That Is Leftist Environmentalism.  

She couldn't just shut up and refrain from calling Trump supporters "Deplorable".  For these folks, many of whom haven't heard of Atlas Forum, they hear this from Hillary's mouth and wonder if it's them that she's talking about.  This is a new experience for these ordinary working folks; to be called scum by your potential next President.  

Perhaps the next Democratic nominee can keep their judgements to themselves about conservative working folks and truly value their work.  If they can ignore the drain on tax dollars that are created by illegal aliens, then then ought to be able to ignore the faults of folks that do the work of America and pay the taxes of America and obey the laws of America.  Is that too much "message discipline" to ask from a Democratic Presidential nominee.

If the Democratic Party is serious about being the majority party and about governing in a way that improves the lives of ALL Americans and reverses the trend of wealth upward toward the 1%, a good start would be to FIRMLY AND UNFLINCHINGLY value work over dependency, lawfulness over disobedience, effort over entitlement, and Americanism over racial/ethnic loyalty.  That would require the Democratic Party to be willing to stop lying to its base and tell them some important truths about what are reasonable and unreasonable wants and goals.  Perhaps if they can actually begin to speak to all Americans as Americans, they just may return to the place in American life they once enjoyed, before they traded it for the cynicism of Leftist Identity Politics.

[PregnantChad]

Everything Clintons—and everyone in that camp (and I am including Hillary’s presidential primaries voters)—represents one thing, should this continue, with the Democratic Party: death.

Yup.  As a Bernie supporter, I completely agree.  I'm just coming from the age when Bill Clinton and his (mixed) message was so popular and now the opposite seems to be true.  But that was a generation ago.  I'm trying to figure out if it's just the passage of time or whether people are rethinking the whole thing.

My takeaway from this election: "YOU'RE NOT LISTENING!"
- Hillary lost just enough support across PA/MI/WI to lose the electoral college -- w/o so much as a visit to WI.  I don't like the electoral college, but I think this sort of tone deafness is what it was designed to punish.  Her side can't complain that much of racism b/c there were just enough Obama voters who crossed over or stayed home.
- A contemptible TV billionaire wipes out 16 candidates in the primary.  Despite every disgusting thing he's said and done, just enough people were willing to roll the dice.  B/c no one else verbalized their struggles and frustrations.  He's not a decent person, otherwise he would apologize and encourage people to simmer down.  His side really needs to understand how isolated, unrepresented and scared they feel.
- And we're not listening to each other.  This is the really sad part.  We are so physically and ideologically divided.  The nastiness, the threats, the violence are so disheartening.
- The media - talking heads, pollsters - got this thing wrong, too.  Everything's about controversy and ratings, and making things seem worse than they are.  They need to wake up too.

With all that said, going forward, the (D)s BETTER start listening to us Bernie supporters.  We are the future of this thing.  But I'm not so hopeful.  I heard that Donna Brazile gave a "stay the course" kind of pep talk the other day.  Like, wtf??  Get her out of there.  And based on who Trump is surrounding himself with, I suspect we'll have an overfilled, one-party swamp whose change the swing voters are not going to be happy with.  But, what a sh*tshow it's gonna be.

quote author=Fuzzy Bear link=topic=252405.msg5391740#msg5391740 date=1479063354]
Trump is the centrist candidate in fact.  Not in temperament, perhaps, but in policy.  Trump brought the GOP to the center in economic policy, and, arguably, is more moderate in social policy as well. 

Even in foreign policy, Trump is less conservative than what the GOP has been dishing out.  His rhetoric belies a more moderate, less interventionist foreign policy.  It is only on immigration issues that he is markedly more conservative.

Trump is a positional moderate without a moderate persona.
[/quote]

I hope you're right that this is the new kind of centrism.  But, I'm not sure that I know what Trump stands for outside of a few outrageous ideas that he's backed away from a bit.  I agree with him generally on illegal immigration being a drain on us and not playing cop all over the world.  I hope he's the ultimate "decider" and not the people he's starting to surround himself with.

The other thing I hope is that he's serious about draining the swamp from the (R) side too.  But he's not a king.  What he's good at, though, is public shaming.  I really doubt he'd go along w/ some of the main points of the Ryan care like getting rid of Medicare for those of us under 55.  At least, I hope not.

[ApatheticAustrian]

seems again like an absolutely fair argument, fuzzy, it's just very fitting for this specific cycle, cause....

- the "put coal miners out of work" sentence was takent out of contect and not meant to pander to a panel of wind energy lobbysists but like a promise to help those coal miners, whose jobs are going to disappear either way, to adapt to new professional roles. [that the democratic party is anti-postpone-coal's-death is absolutely correct, HRC just isn't a very good example for this mindset, imho]

- the deplorable thingie surely has been a NET negative but obama's sentence about clinging was imho much more specficic and much more deadly, which brings me to the point again that a charismatic politican can say everything and a hard-working geek like HRC is always the first to be blamed, while trump tries his best to alienate everyone and still fails.

[pbrower2a]

I expect to introduce a word for Trump economics:


SADONOMICS

[Rules for me, but not for thee]

I expect to introduce a word for Trump economics:


SADONOMICS

More like GREATONOMICS if it works as planned. Hopefully in a freed market though, renewable energy will just win out over coal/oil alleviating climate change concerns.

[‼realJohnEwards‼]

seems again like an absolutely fair argument, fuzzy, it's just very fitting for this specific cycle, cause....

- the "put coal miners out of work" sentence was takent out of contect and not meant to pander to a panel of wind energy lobbysists but like a promise to help those coal miners, whose jobs are going to disappear either way, to adapt to new professional roles. [that the democratic party is anti-postpone-coal's-death is absolutely correct, HRC just isn't a very good example for this mindset, imho]

This part is what really infuriates me. When HRC talked about coal being a thing of the past, she wasn't talking about coal workers themselves; she was trying to plot a course for coal country to move past its home industry.